that’s kind of you, but also cruel 🙂 Your announcement on 6 January came just as I was finally about to muster the courage to make a submission to SPJ. Alas..

I hope you embark on new creative quests once you’ve gathered your strength. And who knows, there is certainly mileage yet in philosophical SF. All the best!

]]>Comment on So Long, and Thanks for the Philosophy by Ray Blankhttp://sciphijournal.org/so-long-and-thanks-for-the-philosophy/#comment-1316
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 11:23:24 +0000http://sciphijournal.org/?p=3605#comment-1316Dear Ádám,

Thanks for your generous and beautifully crafted words. We should have hired you to write for the journal!

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the voyage, although I chose to return to the harbour for fear our ship and crew would be lost at sea. We plotted a course, but safe landing eluded us. I would certainly have been glad to continue to visit exotic shores; far too much SF is written only with an American market in mind, whilst still claiming to be ‘diverse’. It’s as if Columbus chanced upon a new world and then forgot how much ‘old’ world there really is, which is not a mistake I imagine they make in Hungary.

Sometimes exploration does not lead to discovery; this vessel could not carry us where we hoped to go. However, we learn just by venturing forward. For the moment I am glad to have my feet on dry land. So long as there are stars above, we may navigate anew.

for what must seem like the shortest of aeons, you navigated this ‘fractured market’ with perseverance and had to make tough choices, all the while continuing to offer our ungrateful ecosystem of anonymous readers one of the finest fragments in the mosaic of online SF publishing. Hopefully the void left by SPJ will be filled eventually, but this journal shall be sorely missed.

Thank you for the time and effort that went into unearthing the treasures in these archives – may they stay unburied for as long as possible.

All the best to captain and crew on your future voyages!

A reader from Hungary (where’s that?)

]]>Comment on The Adjoiners by Ed Gibeyhttp://sciphijournal.org/the-adjoiners-by-lisa-schoenberg/#comment-1129
Thu, 07 Dec 2017 18:13:28 +0000http://www.sciphijournal.com/?p=2755#comment-1129This is a beautifully written, unique, and immersive piece of fiction, Lisa. I can see why you won the APA contest. I only didn’t understand why an eagle would get a hallucinatory experience from passing out (we don’t), or why an FBI agent would tip someone off about a case. (I worked for the FBI once so that rang especially false for me.) Those were two very minor points though that I only share in the spirit of constructive criticism. As for the “adjoining” technology, how do you see such an implant receiving and sharing the inputs of consciousness? And why would an injection help the adjoining, but only temporarily? None of this is impossible enough to affect my enjoyment of the story, I just wondered what you thought about these scientific details?

Now, for your questions about crime and guilt. Obviously, Colin is guilty of illegal adjoining, which I assume carries some known punishment according to the FBI agent’s dialogue. As to Colin’s assault on himself, I would liken it to the present situation where I would be punished for bullying someone into striking me. That person could be deemed innocent by claims of self defence depending on the history and extent of my bullying. It seems the me the same could be said in the future depending on the level of influence that adjoining was empirically able to exert. In the bullying case, I don’t get charged extra whether I was punched, knifed, or shot, Nor whether the damages were minor or grievous. Those injuries are irrelevant, and the victim of bullying is not convicted of them. I think the same would be said of Jeremy in this case, assuming that adjoining is actually effective.

]]>Comment on By the Light of Day by Louisehttp://sciphijournal.org/by-the-light-of-day/#comment-1030
Tue, 21 Nov 2017 16:01:53 +0000http://sciphijournal.org/?p=3560#comment-1030Beautiful story, well written. Sad ending though.
]]>Comment on The Heinlein Hypocrisy Part I: What Words Mean by Alex Drozdhttp://sciphijournal.org/the-heinlein-hypocrisy-part-i-what-words-mean/#comment-1021
Mon, 20 Nov 2017 06:12:22 +0000http://sciphijournal.org/?p=3534#comment-1021I’m not familiar with how his views might have changed over time, but in “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Heinlein was certainly an agnostic. His literary ego, Jubal Hershaw, even donated money to churches in his atheist friend’s name just to goad him.
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